The least expensive laptop in this line. 4GB of memory. 320GB hard drive is generous. eSATA port included for storage expansion. T touch typist's keyboard. Good processing for the money.

Cons

A bigger battery would sweeten the pot. No HDMI port.

Bottom Line

The Gateway TC7804u is one of the most affordable laptops on the marketyet it doesn't cut corners on processing and features to get there.

Gateway seems to have found the perfect solution for weathering the economic storm: Sell the majority of its laptops at bargain-basement prices. The Gateway TC7804u is tailor-made for users who aren't ready to settle for a netbook's diminutive attributes 'yet don't want to pay the high premium for an Apple laptop. The TC7804u comes with a spacious 14-inch LED screen, a full-size keyboard, and ample features. Though it uses last year's parts, this general-purpose laptop has enough oomph to last you through several school years. And at $700 (street), paying for it at your local Best Buy won't feel like feeding cash into a shredder.

Similar Products

Gateway now has an entire line of laptops priced under $1,000: the MC7803u (16-inch widescreen), the MD7801u (15.6-inch), and the UC7807u (13.3-inch). At 5.2 pounds, the TC7804u is the lightest in this group. It's even lighter than the UC7807u (5.3 pounds), which has a smaller screen because it uses a different type of plastic. It's also a shade lighter than other 14-inch rivals like the Sony VAIO VGN-CS190 (5.3 pounds) and the Toshiba Satellite M305-S4835 (5.5 pounds).

With cheap laptops, design is usually hit-or-miss (mostly miss), but Gateway has managed to engineer an attractive look. The TC7804 takes some cues from the automotive industry, with its burgundy lid lacquered like the hood of a luxury car. And a black metallic strip reminiscent of a sleek belt and buckle runs down the center. It's all tastefully done. Its rivals use simple designs to their advantage as well, the Toshiba M305-S4835 with its patterns under its glossy finish and the Sony CS190 with its all-pink case.

The TC7804u's 14-inch LED widescreen represents the shift to the new 16:9 screen format, which is part of an industry-wide effort to conform to consumer television aspect ratios. The M305-S4835 and the CS190 use 16:10 screen ratiostraditional laptop display dimensions that are slightly narrower but taller than the new format. Neither format can really boast additional screen real estate, but the resolutions are a bit different. The TC7084u's 1,366-by-768 is considered WXGA, or generic, at best. Bigger 16:9 systems like the Dell Studio 15 tend to offer higher screen resolutions (1,440-by-900), but they also tack on extra weight. The TC7804u's widescreen is wide enough to fit up to nine Excel spreadsheet columns and pleasant enough to take in a high-definition video at full screen.

The full-size keyboard is similar to the one on the Gateway MD7801u and should easily accommodate any touch typist. The spacing between the keys is uniform, with minimal gaps. It is unlike a traditional keyboard, where the grooves between keys are relatively deep and wide, and also unlike the one found on the Apple MacBook 13-inch (Aluminum), where the keys are set apart from one other. Because the TC7804u is a smaller system, its touchpad is narrower than those on the MC7803u and the MD7801u, with dimensions about half as large as those of the MacBook's enormous touchpad. (The constriction, however, didn't impact my navigating experience.) The mouse buttons are a little loose and make faint clicking noises when pressed.

Feature-wise, the TC7804 has most of the bases covered. The one glaring omission is an HDMI port, which is a standard digital video port found on most consumer laptops nowadays, including on the MC7803u ($1,000) and the MD7801u ($800). Gateway, however, justifies this omission by slashing its price to just $700. The TC7804 has three USB ports, one of which doubles as an eSATA port. And it does have a VGA port, so you aren't without a video-out connection. A 5-in-1 card reader is located in the front bezel, and a tray-ejecting dual-layer DVD burner resides on the right-hand side of the laptop. The 320GB hard drive is very generous at this price, and with all Gateway laptops you get a one-year standard warranty.

The 2-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 processor is the same as the one found in the MD7801u and the UC7807u, and the system also comes with 4GB of memory. Although the T6400 is regarded as a previous-generation processor, the TC7804's performance is similar to those of the Toshiba M305-S4835 and the Sony CS190. The TC7804 trailed the M305-S4835 but beat the CS190 on video encoding and CineBench R10 tests, albeit by margins narrow enough to be barely detectable in real-world scenarios. The Dell 15 uses a current-generation processor and a dedicated ATI graphics card, which accounts for its higher performance scores and price. Since the TC7804u runs on Intel's integrated graphics, serious 3D gamers will want to pass on it.

I would like to see a higher-capacity battery on the TC7804u. The 49-Wh (six-cell) battery drained in 3 hours 30 minutes on the MobileMark 2007 test. Meanwhile, the M305-S4835's 78-Wh unit approached 5 hours running the same test.

Gateway has solidified its position as an aggressive provider of value-priced laptops. The TC7804u's launch price is merely its starting point: Best Buy will have further deals down the line. The TC7804u may be the cheapest laptop in the latest crop from Gateway, but it's not as if the company is handing to you a bare-bones chassis, either. That said, the more expensive Editors' Choice Dell Studio 15 is better designed, richer in features, and offers a larger selection of processors to choose from. Still, a 14-inch LED widescreen, ample features, and decent processing power are good reasons to put the Gateway TC7804u budget laptop on your shopping list.

Gateway TC7804u

Gateway TC7804u

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